Charles E Borjas

Jorogumo Charles E Borjas

An ancient Japanese castle in the mountains of California? Impossible you say? Only in the dictionary of fools. Deadly? For sure. How did they get there? Killings very close to mining towns. Who is doing the killing? Sheriffs and Marshals don't know what to make of it. Is it a serial killer...or killers? Is it a war by a foreign power to eliminate the American people? Or are they after the gold in the mines? People being eaten alive, while the heart is still beating, being wrapped up in a web of the strength of steel for each thread. Are they being saved for future meals? What are the citizens doing about it? Who are the people handing the problem? Perhaps hiring a bounty hunter will take care of the problem. Perhaps an undercover lady Pinkerton detective can help solve the problem. The local sheriffs and town marshals are not well enough trained to deal with what me and my Chandra had just gone through. Blood spilled indeed. Lives lost for sure. Monsters? Or are they human? Maybe both. One thing is for sure; someone or something is organizing some kind of an army. Could it be the local Klamath Indians? Or a ferocious cut throat tribe with a lust for the white man's blood? Fear is spreading quickly. People are trying to escape. Many are just disappearing never to be seen or heard of again. What kind of murderous faction is this? That tears helpless victims limb from limb after gorging themselves with their blood and organs as well as every bit of flesh on their bones? What are they after? How many are there? Whoever has seen them never lived to tell the tale. Except for a couple of lucky ones. They gave us the idea of what we were up against. But we did not know for sure until we saw them ourselves. Spiders. Giant ones. Mythological creatures who are cursed to walk the earth with the power to change-- into something fearsome and ferocious. Humans who can shape-shift into spiders with bodies larger than a wolf. Leg span is larger than a locomotive wheel. That is only the Japanese spider princess and her Joro spider warriors. But there is a larger species of spider, the Huntsman. A relative of the princess? Can hundreds of years of tradition and custom be broken in order to save the people who live in the surrounding mining towns and lumberjack villages? How many more will die, be slaughtered and devoured or go missing before they are stopped? Can they be stopped? If so, how? Even more important, can the curse that turned these Japanese pilgrims into cut-throat, blood-thirsty monsters be broken?